The Cross and the Crescent

        Religious intolerance, as I noted in my last post, has been at the heart of society’s most destructive wars and its most enduring feuds. But why does our “intelligent” species allow such passive beliefs to motivate us towards such violent conflicts? Well, most social psychologists understand religion to be one way in which a group of individuals can assert civil order and convey moral codes to one another while providing answers to philosophical questions about the meaning of life. Questions that, until the development of scientific study, were highly open to interpretation and likely to invoke high levels of existential anxiety. I guess religion could be seen as ancient society’s equivalent of Xanax. And similar to the aggression that one would expect from someone addicted to Xanax who has had their access to the drug taken away, any threat to a group’s religious beliefs in ancient society would elicit a seemingly irrational amount of aggressive response. Most religious believers today are now much less hostile about new ideas (perhaps thanks to the existence of actual Xanax?), but certain followers within at least two major religions remain quite aggressive.  
      These two religions have a combined following of 3.7 BILLION people worldwide, and, as such, are the two largest of all of the world religions. Namely, they are Christianity (2 billion followers) and Islam (1.72 billion). Along with Judaism, they are known as the Abrahamic religions (due to their shared reverence of the patriarch Abraham) and they worship the same singular God. Unfortunately, 2000 years of separatism and political conflict has led to vast ideological and cultural differences among the modern versions of these belief systems to the point that they are now indistinguishable from one another. 
       In terms of similarities, Christianity and Islam both have a founding prophet on whom they base their divergent teachings; for Christians, this prophet is Jesus Christ. Islam actually agrees that Jesus Christ was a prophet of God and that he was the only human aside from Adam whom was created directly by God. However, Christians believe that Jesus was crucified and resurrected by God so that all believers in Christianity would thereafter be saved from condemnation in the afterlife. In contrast, the Islamic belief is that God would never have allowed his only begotten son to be crucified. Their belief, instead, is that Jesus was never crucified at all, and that there is only one manifestation of God. In other words, Muslims do not support the idea of the Holy Trinity (the three manifestations of God as believed by modern conservative Christians). Instead, they believe that another Prophet of God came after Jesus, and his name was Mohammad. As a political leader, Mohammad was passionate and determined. He believed that God’s word (the Qu’ran) was to be taken literally and any who resisted His word were to be forced into submission. Mohammad’s character traits stood in stark contrast to Jesus Christ’s self-sacrificing approach, and most of the conflicts between Islam and Christianity arise from these fundamental differences. 
        Nonetheless, even Mohammad’s first followers respected Christians as followers of a shared God. Early conquered Christians were even given more freedoms than their non-Christian counterparts. Moreover, early Christians didn’t believe Jesus was a manifestation of the Divine, itself, like most of today’s more conservative Christians. As a mere prophet of God (not God himself), he was originally seen as being wholly human. Over the centuries, the original concept was re-interpreted and transformed into what many Muslims feel is too polytheistic (worship of multiple gods) than their teachings allow. Early Christian ideals actually differed very little from the early Islamic ideals. So what went wrong? Well, one glance at a map can show you part of the problem: physical distance. This combined with population explosions and numerous inner conflicts within both religions have led to the development of entirely different cultures than the ones that founded them. 
        The current problem is now that these two vastly different cultural systems are being forced, more and more, to interact with one another as the world becomes increasingly interconnected. The only common thread to which they can both relate is their shared worship of the same God. Using this to their advantage, government organizations manipulate public opinion towards political ends by encouraging an image of the opposite side being “evil” wrongdoers from a strange foreign land. Today we see Islam and Christianity as two entirely separate and exclusive ideas, but its time for our governments to stop using this misinformed prejudice as a means to justify their aggressive foreign relations. Modern liberal believers within both Christianity and Islam have recently begun to understand that the two beliefs are not so incompatible. There is hope for the future if the more traditional sects can be convinced to accept this mutual tolerance. Thousands of years of violence and death must be forgiven on both sides of the conflict, but surely the security of future generations is worth making this effort. It's clearly time to grow out of the hatred that runs rampant in these two religions. As the new world culture strengthens, we all have to begin revering human life as passionately as we do our own personal beliefs or that life will surely suffer the consequences.

**The information above is not meant to be a full analysis of either religion. I have simplified the information so as to support my argument. If you would like a more exhaustive source of information, visit my information sources below: 
http://www.religioustolerance.org 
http://www.religionfacts.com